


If two's company and three's a crowd, what does that make four and five?

by winethroughwater



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/F, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-08-21 17:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16581065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winethroughwater/pseuds/winethroughwater
Summary: Five times Hilda didn't attend the orgy and one time she did





	1. Family:  Araneidae, Genus: Argiope

_ Argiope aurantia _ is known as the writing spider.

 

As a child Hilda had recited poetry to them--her own original verses made up on the spot--hoping that she’d wake up one morning and find the words spelled out across the eaves of their porch.  

 

So far, years later, she’s yet to compose anything web-worthy. 

 

This particular specimen is small but industrious. Since Hilda left her in the woods outside the academy this morning, she’s spun an impressive web complete with a zigzagged stitch down the center.

 

“You’re sending that back first thing in the morning.”

 

Hilda jumps at the unmistakable sound of her sister’s voice suddenly at her back.

 

“You know they’re not allowed.”  

 

Zelda leans forward over Hilda's shoulder and blows on the web. The thin filaments flicker in and out of sight, caught in the moonlight then released.

 

Instead of retreating to the periphery of the web, the agitated spider rushes at Zelda, raising two angry legs in defense.

 

Zelda’s lips quirk, impressed with its tenacity, and she steps away without bothering it further.

 

Hilda whispers an apology to the little black and yellow spider and promises to come back in the morning--without Zelda.

 

*****************************************************

 

Zelda smells wrong tonight as they follow the trail back to the academy--like too much, no,  _ too many _ perfumes, like sweat and like smoke.

 

Feeling oddly bold, Hilda teases, “You don’t half reek.”

 

“Of  _ sex _ .”

 

Zelda glances over her shoulder to watch Hilda’s face scrunch.

 

“ _ Nasty _ .”

 

Zelda pauses and absently plucks a leaf from a nearby shrub.

 

“Why aren’t you inside?”

 

Zelda folds the leaf in half then hands it to Hilda.  

 

“The real question is, why aren’t  _ you _ ?  I’d think you’d want to make a good impression, this being the first time you’re old enough to attend.”

 

Hilda worries the leaf between her thumb and forefinger as Zelda lectures.  

 

“You’re the one always saying that if I embarrass myself, I embarrass you and the whole Spellman family right back to the year dot.”

 

“What  _ are  _ you babbling about?”

 

The leaf has started to stain her fingers so she lets it fall to the ground.  Her eyes stay fixed on it as she says,  “I’ve never actually done  _ it _ , alright?”

 

“I could die of shock.”

 

Hilda’s chest burns. Zelda will always be Zelda, even on nights when she blows on a spider’s web instead of striking a finger through it.

 

“Look,” Zelda starts, “this is the perfect place for a first time.”

 

Hilda can’t see how that could possibly be true.

 

“The group atmosphere takes the pressure off individual performance.”

 

She supposes there’s a strange logic to that, and Zelda does have more experience in these matters.

 

“What if I’m really bad at it?”

 

She has to ask. She wants to add,  _ What if I don’t like it?  What if there’s something wrong with me? Something inherently  _ undark _ that can’t be fixed? _

 

“Why do you assume you'll be bad?  The rest of us are quite skilled.”

 

If only she had a fraction of Zelda’s confidence--she’d still be damned conceited.  

 

“And it isn’t as if you’re hideous.”

 

That’s as close to a compliment from her sister as she’s likely to get and it loosens her tongue enough to air another secret.

 

“I’ve never even properly kissed anyone.”

 

Zelda’s hand flies to her chest melodramatically.

 

She's close to shouting, close to tears.

 

“I wish you wouldn’t be so horrible to me all the time.”

 

“Oh, stop being an overly-sensitive ninny and come here.”

 

Zelda’s fingers close around her shoulders and she’s marched backwards until she bumps against a tree.

 

Newly manicured fingers cup her chin and tip it upwards until she’s staring into the dark eyes they get from their mother’s side.  

 

The fingers at her chin slide to the back of her neck and nudge her forward.  

 

Hilda watches, fascinated, as Zelda wets her lips and leans closer.

 

“Close your eyes, Hilda.”

 

Zelda  _ would  _ be bossy at everything, even kissing.

 

Zelda’s mouth presses against hers.  It's soft and chaste and sisterly.  

 

Then Zelda’s lips move.

 

Something as small as a breath across her lips surely shouldn’t feel so, so  _ tingly _ .

 

The fingers at the back of her neck thread through her hair as Zelda’s lips easily coax hers apart; she feels a delicious pressure as Zelda draws her lower lip between her own.  

 

Zelda’s lips still. Her forehead drops against Hilda’s; her weight shifts downward until Hilda can feel the outline of her hip bone.

 

“ _Zelds_?”

 

The hand that had been holding her in place leaves her arm and finds her breast. When Zelda’s thumb, moving in a slow arc, brushes against her nipple, Hilda’s hips cant forward unexpectedly.  

 

A noise she’s never heard comes from deep in Zelda’s throat.

 

And then it's over as Zelda takes two stumbling steps backward.

 

“Go play with your little friend while you still can.”

 

She fishes a book of matches out of the pocket of her robe, followed by the cigarette she’d obviously come outside to smoke and starts for the school again.

 

“If you tell about my spiders, I’ll tell that you’ve been smoking again.”

 

“Only babies tattle to mummy and daddy, Hilda.”


	2. ad dolorem

If the gilded invitation has come this year, Hilda hasn’t seen it.  

 

Maybe it's considered in poor taste to invite a family in mourning.

 

**************************************************

 

Most families don’t mourn this way; she’s seen enough of them come through their doors over the years to know.

 

They’re in the grip of something.

 

This desperate way they’re clawing at each other isn’t normal.

 

They’d closed ranks after the funeral, cut off kin and coven.  Even Ambrose has stopped knocking on their door. 

 

There’s only room for the two of them. 

 

**************************************************

 

Sabrina frets, is tended to.

  
They are three  _ now _ , she thinks.  Or is it  _ again _ ? The tenses have gotten slippery but the number is less than it was before.


	3. Amorphophallus titanum

All day it had been,   _We run a mortuary,_ Hilda _.  People will start to talk,_ Hilda.  So when Zelda says, “I hope you have a very nice time watching your plant,” Hilda is certain she doesn’t mean it.

 

The crease between Zelda’s eyebrows is another clue.

 

Hilda takes the tiniest bit of pleasure in knowing that one day no amount of expensive night creams nor magic will be able to get rid of that line, etched largely in part from looking at her like she is an imbecile at least half a dozen times a day.

 

She isn’t going to explain again about how the smell of decaying flesh attracts the flies and beetles necessary for pollination.  And she’s certainly not going to discuss the specifics of the spathe, the spandix, and the carpels again. (She’d drawn a diagram and turned all red before she realized Zelda was winding her up.)

 

Still, there’s something quite titillating about a plant that is willing to be that boldly, well, _anatomical_.  

 

“Not that different from what you’ll be doing really,” Hilda muses, as they stand looking out the window into the backyard.  “Only on a slightly larger scale, I’d imagine.”

 

The ladder Hilda had climbed to dangle the tailor’s tape down to Sabrina’s waiting hands is still standing next to the corpse plant.  

 

Zelda exhales sharply through her nose.

 

“You have no idea.”

 

Nothing like a chance to be catty to turn her sister’s mood right around.  

 

Zelda adjusts the comb in her hair and Hilda notices for the first time that Zelda’s nail polish is exactly the same shade of deep burgundy as the plant’s petal.

 

 _Ripe_.  

 

The plant only turns that color when it is fevered to a temperature that mimics the human body--only when it’s ripe.

 

The inside of Zelda’s thigh is probably just as flushed.

 

If she were to tell her so, if she could say the word out loud in this context without blushing—she’d only delay Zelda’s evening.

 

She doesn’t want to know if the polish was a deliberate choice or pure happenstance.  If she knew for sure, she’d have to also puzzle out what type of _teasing_ it was meant to be.  

 

With Zelda she just never knows.

 

Zelda oh-so-casually brings her index finger to the corner of her mouth, ostensibly checking her lipstick hasn’t smudged.

 

Hilda’s obviously been staring at her fingers too long, but there’s that word again in her mind. It’s not even one of the real four-letter words but she’s never been good at that kind of talk. Zelda, well, Zelda would take a word like _ripe_ and—

 

A small, blonde bundle of energy runs full force into the back of them and knocks that thought right out of Hilda’s mind.

 

Sabrina clambers up onto the counter between them.

 

Hilda can see the lecture brewing:  Sabrina climbs on the furniture because Ambrose “drapes about the house like a bored courtesan.”  Sabrina looks like “a ragamuffin who got dressed in the dark,” because Hilda let’s her choose her own clothes now and because Hilda dresses like “a ragamuffin who got dressed in the dark.”

 

“Do you have everything, possum?” Hilda asks. “Blanket?”

 

“Check.”

 

“Wellies?”

 

Red rubber boots kick against the cabinet.

 

“Journal? Pencil? Tape measure? Watch? Camera?” she rattles off.

 

“In my bag,” Sabrina laughs.

 

“What on earth do you need all of that for?”

 

Sabrina’s face pinches in an all too familiar way as she fixes her eyes on her other aunt.  

 

Zelda in miniature, Hilda thinks.

 

“We’re decomposing, Auntie Zee.”   

 

Right down to the tone that drips with astonished derision.

 

Zelda’s eyes narrow.

 

It would be funny if it weren’t so terrifying--the prospect of having two of them in the house for years to come.

 

Zelda ducks her face to Sabrina’s head and sniffs loudly.

 

“It certainly smells like it.”

 

Sabrina giggles and leans into Zelda as Hilda explains, “That’s _doc-u-men-ting_ , love.”

 

*************************

 

“Are you _sure_ you wouldn’t rather spend your night,” Zelda pauses to see if Sabrina is paying attention, but her niece’s eyes are glued to the window, “in the company of adults?”

 

“I’ve been waiting nine years for her to bloom.”

 

“Now there’s a metaphor if--”

 

“It moved!”

 

Sabrina is off the counter and running for the door, shouts of “Tell your Auntie Zelda goodnight, Sabrina!” and “For Satan’s sake, close the door!” following behind her.

 

Zelda is nearly knocked off balance as Vinegar Tom runs through her legs, heading for the open door himself.

 

“Where do you think you’re going?  Tom!”

 

Outside, Zelda’s dour old familiar is rolling on his back, kicking his legs in the air, lost in a frenzy of canine ecstasy as he soaks up as much of the scent from the base of the corpse plant as he can.

 

“He loves it!” Sabrina shouts, fingers clamped around her nose to ward off the smell.  She starts to run in rings around the plant. “Auntie Hilda! You’re missing it!”

 

Hilda looks to Zelda.

 

“Not a chance of you staying, is there?”

 

“None whatsoever.”


	4. Expecto Patronum

It’s well before dawn when she hears the front door close and Zelda’s unusually unsteady footsteps on the stairs. 

 

Hunkered down under the covers and blanketed in the dark of the room, Hilda listens as the hinges on their bedroom door protest Zelda’s arrival. 

 

And then--

 

Nothing.  The room goes quiet.  

 

So quiet that she comes out from her quilted cocoon and squints into the dark.

 

“Were you waiting up for me?”  

 

The pull on Hilda’s lamp snaps to and the room is filled with light and Zelda’s self-satisfaction. 

 

“ _ You’re _ ”--she’s added a touch too much enthusiasm for someone who’s just been woken in the middle of the night, attempts to course correct--“You’re in early, sister.”

 

As Zelda’s arms cross over her chest, Hilda brings the back of her hand to her mouth and feigns a yawn, does better on what she hopes passes for a sleepy stretch as she raises her other arm above her head.

 

“I saw the light on from the road.”

 

“You must’ve been mistaken.”

 

She sees her miscalculation immediately in the dark red smirk that’s growing larger with her every lie.

 

“You were waiting up.”

 

Zelda unknots the belt to her coat, tosses it behind her onto her own bed.

 

She’s wearing a slip of black silk (or a black, silk slip—either is an apt description).  

 

It rides up obscenely when Zelda sits primly on the edge of Hilda’s bed. 

 

_ Bugger _ .  

 

As Zelda’s hands busy themselves popping open the row of little pearl buttons down the front of Hilda’s nightgown, her mouth is equally as busy scolding:  “I don’t know why you put yourself through this year after year.”

 

Hilda sighs as the cold air hits her newly exposed chest.

 

“Have you been crying?”

 

“No.”

 

Another lie.  

 

In fact, Hilda has a strong suspicion that she’s cried herself splotchy and that’s what made Zelda ask in the first place.

 

Zelda’s finger nail trails lightly down the valley between her breasts.  

 

Hilda expects a pinch or a bite--not the closed-mouth, but ever-so-soft lipped, kiss to her temple. 

 

“If only you’d get over this perverse aversion of yours, we could have such fun."  

 

Zelda might as well have buried her head between her legs for the response Hilda feels. 

 

But--she just needs time. Time to recover from the emotional whiplash she’s feeling. 

 

Maybe an hour.  

 

She’d really like for Zelda to swan off to the bath and scrub off whatever all and sundry had left behind, to magic away the bruises and scratches she’s sure are hiding beneath her slip.

 

To just leave her be for a bit.

 

Maybe her gaze drifts minutely to the left or maybe Zelda can just read her mind.

 

“What are you hiding?” Zelda asks sharply.

 

“Nothing.” 

 

“ _ Hilda _ .”

 

Zelda lunges, and Hilda rolls.  

 

Their hands meet beneath Hilda’s pillow, briefly at a stalemate.

 

“ _ Get _ .   _ Off _ .   _ Zeld _ .”

 

The look on Zelda’s face is positively lascivious as their eyes meet—Satan below, she hadn’t meant it like  _ that _ —then triumphant as Zelda pulls the object, a novel, from beneath the pillow.   

 

Zelda’s eyes narrow until they’re all but hidden under mascara and eyeliner as she takes in the florid cover, all reds and oranges.  Her lips mouth the title in disbelief. 

 

“ _ Really _ , sister.”

 

Those two words drip with more self-righteous condemnation than anyone sitting bare-assed on her bed has any right to dish out.

 

“Sod cultural appropriation!” Hilda curses, snatching the book back. “I want to know what happens."   

 

Zelda closes her eyes.

 

"And I only have four chapters and an epilogue left.”

 

Her chest rises and falls sharply, a witch gripped in martyrdom to her sister’s poor taste. 

 

“Which one of them died?”

 

Hilda can barely get the word out:  “Snape.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading and reviewing (and writing such fucking amazing fics)!


	5. atropa belladonna

Hilda holds up a dirt-crusted hand to ward off whatever glib comment is on the tip of Zelda’s tongue.  

 

One _took you long enough_ and she just might send her sister on her own vacation into the Cain pit.

 

********************************************

 

The industrial shower down in the morgue sputters and groans before pelting her with a hot-as-it’s-going-to-get stream.

 

Strangely this has come to be the part of the process that she dreads most.

 

The nerves in her body fire too freely and it makes every drop of water from the shower feel too heavy against her skin.  

 

There’s something unnatural about feeling too alive after so recently being dead.

 

And there are all the more practical matters that nag at the back of her mind. The muddy footprints across the floor—that she’ll have to mop up later herself. The sodden clothes in the bin because there’s no salvaging them--that cardigan had been a favorite.

 

There’s the soap that they buy by the gallon and only use down here.  It’s deceptively pink. It’s artificial and antiseptic and leaves a film on her skin.

 

She tells herself every time that she’ll bring some of her own homemade soap down for next time so at least she could have the comfort of milk and lavender and honey. But by the time the next day rolls around, she’s convinced herself that maybe, just maybe, there won’t be a next time.

 

The floors and cardigan and soap _are_ trivial.

 

Maybe that’s what really bothers her. Her resurrection is miraculous even by witches’ standards but in the end it amounts to a series of mundane chores.

 

At least Prufrock had coffee spoons.

 

********************************************

 

She cringes, she’s sure of that, but hopefully it can be passed off as a reaction to rubbing the dirt out of her eyes--which stings to high Hell.

 

She _won’t_ react.  

 

She won’t give the figure hovering near the autopsy table the satisfaction of seeing her instinctually scramble to cover herself.

 

Zelda never sees this part, what happens in between her drudging up the porch stairs, only eyes and teeth not black from the ground, and her smiling cheerily as she pours tea for the family the next morning.

 

Hilda’s going to ignore her. If she argues, Zelda is more likely to find it a challenge.

 

Hilda can’t remember the Cain pit and Zelda’s annual night out ever coinciding in the past.

 

If Zelda has come home all, _needy_ , well, she should have thought of that before she brained her with the fire poker yesterday.

 

 _“Hilda_ , come with me.”  

 

Zelda holds out her hand in invitation.

 

_I made this one just for you, sister._

 

Hilda had been seven and only too happy to take the warm scone from the napkin cradled in Zelda’s palm.  Hours of fevered delusions before she finally died taught them both valuable lessons:  Zelda preferred a more tactile--and immediate--approach to dispatching her sister; and Hilda set to learning all the plants, starting with _atropa belladonna_ , that could be used as poison.

 

“I’ll run us a proper bath upstairs.”

 

Still the saccharine tone of Zelda’s voice makes Hilda’s skin crawl--of course, that could also be the beetles that have nested in her hair.  

 

********************************************

 

When she finally sees the last of the mud swirl down the drain, Zelda is gone but Hilda’s favorite pink robe is folded neatly on the table.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The One With the Orgy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still need to refine the second half of this chapter tomorrow but thought I’d go ahead and post the beginning in case any of you needed a break from family this holiday season. :)

“You’re still alright with the baby tonight, love?” Hilda asks oh-so casually, stirring her tea.  “If something’s come up--”

 

“Nope,” Sabrina answers cheerily. “You and Aunt Zelda can stay out as long as you like.”

 

She deposits her breakfast dishes in the sink and on the way out of the kitchen stops and squeezes Hilda’s shoulder.

 

“If you decide _coven business_ isn’t for you, we can always binge more of _The Great British Baking Show_ on Netflix.”

 

“She thinks you’ll chicken out.”  Zelda’s disembodied voice floats from behind a Finnish newspaper.

 

*****************************************

 

“Auntie Zee, shirts or skins?”

 

The paper drops and Zelda’s brows furrow in thought.

 

The corner of her mouth quirks.

 

“Skins, I think.”  

 

Ambrose shrugs.

 

“Fair enough.”

 

It’s been so long since their nephew was allowed to attend one of these events that Hilda had forgotten how distasteful it was when he and Zelda divied up the attendees. She’s pretty sure this “shirts and skins” thing is some sort of sports metaphor and not literal but she wouldn’t swear to it.

 

For good measure, she coos down to the baby in her lap, “May you, my little darling, never be that crass.”

 

“I have to know,” Ambrose asks between bites of toast. “How’d you get Sabrina to babysit tonight? _Sixteen_ , name newly in the Book--you could not have kept me away from my first”—his eyes cut to his other aunt and he smiles—“ _coven business_.”

 

“I really wish you lot would stop this ‘coven business’ business. You’ve made it worse than just saying it.”

 

“Saying what?” Zelda deadpans.

 

“I couldn’t very well tell a five year old that her aunt was going out,” she pauses long enough to cover the baby’s ears. “For a night of group sex.”

 

“Oh, the o-r-g-y.”

 

Hilda ignores her sister and goes back to the matter of her niece:  “As far as Sabrina is concerned, I guess she simply wasn’t invited.”

 

“Surely a clerical oversight,” Zelda adds. For the first time in ages, she does not use the opportunity to criticize the Church’s flagging leadership.

 

*****************************************

 

Hilda leans in her sister’s direction and drops her voice to a whisper for good measure:  “You incinerated Sabrina’s invitation?”

 

Zelda flicks her hand and cigarette ash floats to the floor.

 

“And scattered it on the wind.”

 

*****************************************

 

She volunteers for a short shift at the bookstore that afternoon just to be out of the house.  

 

She can’t imagine navigating Zelda and her own nerves under the same roof.

 

*****************************************

 

There are reasons she has agreed to attend this year after so many years of avoiding it like mortals do the plague.

 

For one, the Spellman family is in no position to further flaunt social convention.

 

 _Make no waves_.  

 

That’s their strategy for now--not that Sabrina has been holding up her end of that agreement very well.  

 

Hilda’s only recently been un-excommunicated, something that amounted to receiving a notarized letter from the clerk of the Church of Night.  Zelda had finagled that somehow. It was not high on Hilda’s own list of priorities.

 

Ambrose is free to go as he will to Church-sanctified grounds and Church-sponsored events now, is Zelda’s spy into the High Priest’s inner circle.

 

 _He_ won’t be there tonight, is off on some long-planned trip to Rome, baby Judas in tow.

 

She’d certainly not be attending if there were any chance of running into him and for once she would have put up a fight about Zelda’s attendance.

 

Bile rises in the back of her throat at the very thought.

 

She’s put Blackwood out of her mind as the father of the purloined baby sleeping across the hall. As far as Hilda is concerned her little bean magiced right into that bassinet in their, in _Zelda’s_ room.  

 

But she will never forgive him for reawakening Zelda’s predisposition for self-harm.

 

Zelda can burn the Church of Night to the ground for all she cares.  Though it's far more likely she’s planning to run it and that’s worrying to say the least.

 

Hilda’s coven extends to exactly four people beyond herself.  But as long as the safety of those souls relies on the Church, she will toe the line.  

 

Even if it means attending events like this.

 

*****************************************

 

There’s another reason too.

 

It has been a long time.

 

As in months, _a long time_.

 

Months of bickering and fighting. About small things like which spring quilts they should air for their beds and whether or not they should make a commercial for the mortuary. (That had been an unmitigated disaster; the result had run exactly once on local access in the wee hours of the morning.)

 

They’d had furious, brutal arguments about far more important things like Sabrina’s upcoming-but-still-months-away baptism. _That_ had grown and festered as their niece’s birthday approached until it had exploded in front of everyone.

 

Zelda had vented in her usual way, sending her to the Cain pit via blunt-force trauma and having it off with Faustus Bloody Blackwood.

 

She had felt a tingle of perverse pleasure in revealing that she’d kept such a huge secret as Sabrina’s Catholic baptism from Zelda all those years.  

 

But that was fleeting.

 

As was her flirtation with Cee. He was sweet and kind and funny and attractive—all the things she should want. He just wasn’t Zelda so their grand romance had fizzled after two kisses goodnight and one date of dinner and a movie.

 

She and Zelda had gone months without making up in that wordless way they’d practiced since they were teenagers.

 

They might as well be roommates. Or just sisters.

 

It has been so long that frankly it has gotten awkward. Hilda has the sinking feeling that it is now or never again.

 

She could have just marched herself right into their bedroom back when it was still _their_ bedroom and said, “Take me. I’m yours,” like in one of her bodice-rippers.  Zelda would have laughed, sure, and probably made some scathing comment about stating the blindingly obvious, but she’d also have soon had her biting the back of her hand to keep from waking the whole house.

 

Or she could have ambushed Zelda at their desk when she stood to stretch after balancing their receipts as she does at the end of every month.  She could have rucked one of those nice skirts up to Zelda’s waist, buried her face in Zelda’s soft hair and her fingers as deep inside her as she could reach.

 

But she hadn’t and now _this_ had become the less awkward of all those choices.

 

Four invitations had arrived in the post.

 

Zelda had simply held out the one marked “Hildegarde Antoinette Spellman” and asked, “Come with me?” and she’d said, “Okay.”

 

*****************************************

 

The television’s volume is turned down low and the screen casts soft, flickering light across the room. She can see the back of Sabrina’s white-blonde head just over the back of the sofa.

 

“Should you have gotten her a corsage or something?”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous.”  

 

A little ridiculous, yes, but it still would have been nice, Hilda thinks.

 

Zelda is sitting on the edge of her high-backed chair, hands folded neatly in her lap, legs crossed, foot tapping in the air.

 

For her sister, that’s practically bouncing on her bed for Solstice morning.

 

It’s Zelda who looks up and sees her first, who takes her in from head-to-toe.

 

She’d chosen a simple black wrap dress, one that accentuates her curves nicely, if she does say so herself. And she’d tried something different with her hair—simple curls all over—and makeup—dark gray eyeshadow that Sabrina swore made her eyes look so blue she was jealous.

 

Zelda stands and smooths out invisible wrinkles from her own dress. Her eyes linger at Hilda’s cleavage.

 

“We’ll be late if we don’t leave soon.”

 

Sabrina turns and sits on her knees, looking over the back of the couch. “You look so pretty, Auntie Hilda,” she beams with a wide smile and sideways glance at Zelda. “You both do.”

 

*****************************************

 

“Wait!  You can’t leave yet.”

 

“Are you nervous about being on your own for the first time with the baby?”

 

“Oh, no. Nothing like that. I just wanted a picture before you left.”

 

Sabrina produces a Polaroid camera of all things and directs them to “smile and say cheese.”

 

Hilda does both. Zelda does neither.

 

“You realize we are attending an orgy tonight and not a high school prom?”

 

*****************************************

 

“It's polite to arrive 15 minutes late.”

 

“So we are _doubly_ polite?”

 

“ _Zeld_.”

 

Zelda pulls them into the shadows and Hilda prepares herself for the same lecture she’s been hearing since she turned sixteen.

 

Only, Zelda is quiet this time as she leans back against the wall and pulls Hilda close against her. She takes Hilda’s hand in both of hers and guides it under her coat, up her dress, and directly between her legs, never breaking eye contact with her sister.

 

“Either you take care of this inside or back at home,” Zelda rasps.  She’s bare beneath her dress, slick and fevered with want, when Hilda’s fingers automatically start to stroke her. “Makes no difference to me--but _please_ make your mind up soon.”

 

Touching Zelda makes _her_ ache; it always has and she supposes it always will.

 

How had they gone without this for so long?

 

“I suppose _right here_ isn’t an option?”

 

It’s only half a joke; something has to break the gravity of what’s fallen over them, and here is nice and shadowy and _now (_ and technically still in public so it might count).

 

Zelda pulls their hands away, catches both of Hilda’s in her own and holds them down by their sides.  She sways forward, leans down until her lips graze Hilda’s.

 

“Now stop being a ninny.”

 

*****************************************

 

There is a coat check. Because, of course, there is. Only most of the clothes go too.

 

Hilda pulls at the tie that secures her dress and let’s it fall open.  She shrugs out of it as quickly as possible and hands it off to the attendant who is wearing a stag mask and nothing else.

 

Her arms cross over herself instinctively.

 

She’d worn black underthings, fancier and more complicated than she usually preferred.

 

She’d tried to remember what Zelda had worn all those times and take a cue from that. Something bone deep in her would not simply let her ask Zelda’s opinion. She could only think of the Zelda from her nightmare, the one who had spewed such coarse, horrible things at her.  Zelda wouldn’t have said those things in that way. Rationally she knows that Zelda was speaking her own darkest thoughts.

 

_Who could love you?_

 

Zelda’s nostrils flare, her chest visibly rises with a deep breath.

 

“You look very nice, sister.”

 

This Zelda is not going to mock her.

 

The real Zelda quickly turns and offers her back to Hilda, sweeping her hair over her shoulder.

 

Hilda slides the zipper with practiced ease but pauses as she reaches Zelda’s lower back and catches a glimpse of the deep crimson slip that had been hiding beneath the neatly tailored dress.

 

Zelda keeps her heels on, of course, even as she steps out of the dress and hands it away. It seems silly to be this nearly naked and still wearing shoes so Hilda toes hers off and they join her coat and dress somewhere out of sight.

 

Their height difference is even more exaggerated than usual and it does something to Hilda’s chest.

 

*****************************************

 

Her sister has never been one for hand holding—would roll her eyes and complain when their mother asked her to hold Hilda’s hand even when they were small children—but Zelda had taken hold of her hand and not let go, pulling her deeper into the building.

 

The smell of incense is overwhelming. The drums, carried by a series of naked, masked figures, weaving their way through the crowd, are unmistakably beating a rhythm meant to mimic sex.

 

Hilda steps over a body here and a body there as she tries to keep up with Zelda.  The floors, the walls, even the ceiling, are littered with writhing forms.

 

Her foot connects with something soft. She wishes she hadn’t looked to see what it was.

 

“Sorry. Oh. That had to hurt,” she calls, but Zelda doesn’t let her linger to apologize further.

 

Hilda has a hard time understanding how this of all things is supposed to prove unifying for the coven. She won’t be able to look at these people again without turning beet red.

 

She waves awkwardly at Ambrose who’s apparently come up for air from beneath a heap of very nubile young men.

 

The things these people she had known most of her life were getting up to.

 

Some of the things she had done herself. Just not in public. And only with her sister.

 

Some things she had flatly refused to try. Even in private and even with Zelda. She doesn’t care what Zelda knows about the capacity of the vagina  because she is a midwife. Her fist is not going _inside_ her.

 

Seeing that in practice now, she can’t say it looks anymore appealing as an outside observer.

 

*****************************************

 

She’s suddenly overwhelmed with questions. The logistics. The etiquette. _Did mother pull Zelda aside and explain this to her at some point?_

 

“This may be a silly question, but what do I do now that I am actually at the orgy?”

 

She has to speak louder than she would like even though Zelda is standing right next to her.

 

Following Zelda to a relatively private alcove has also brought them closer to the drums.

 

“Make me come.”

 

“Pardon?”

 

“If you can remember how.”

 

So she had heard correctly.

 

She also heard the implication in Zelda’s voice that this extended hiatus hadn’t been equally her fault.

 

 _Now or maybe never again_.

 

She gives Zelda an uncharacteristic little shove at the sternum and Zelda sinks down into an overstuffed chair behind her.

 

This is familiar territory; she’d been learning Zelda in one way or another all her life.

 

And this Zelda isn’t at all hard to read:  green eyes hungry, lips parted. One red strap is sliding down a porcelain shoulder. She spreads her long legs and is the picture of wanton desire.

 

Hilda undoes the hooks of her bustier with trembling fingers but only enough to free the tops of her breasts.

 

It’s no surprise that Zelda’s hands immediately reach for her.

 

She dodges them easily.

 

“Sit on those if you have to,” Hilda warns. “Just keep them to yourself for now.”

 

Zelda’s carefully manicured nails bite into the velvet arms of the chair.

 

Hilda slides her own hands up her lace-encased ribs, cups her breasts, and watches Zelda squirm. She tugs one side of the lace down just enough to free her nipple, earning a drawn out, “Yes,” from her sister.

 

Hilda takes a quick look around to make sure no one can see exactly what she is doing and finds no one paying them any particular attention now.

 

But she has Zelda’s rapt attention as she slides her hand down to cup herself through the loose silk of her French knickers.

 

She’s just as wet as Zelda was and tells her so.

 

Zelda’s hips are rocking obscenely against the chair; her thighs rub together seeking some sort of friction.

 

Hilda rubs her fingers harder, could easily bring herself off watching Zelda watch her.

 

“Do you remember the first time I let you watch me?”

 

Zelda whimpers.

 

“You had a hard time keeping your hands to yourself then too.”

 

“ _Hilda_ .”  Zelda’s voice is as close to begging as it goes. “ _Please_.”

 

“Just say it.”

 

Zelda throws her head back.

 

“Uncle! Satan bless it. _Uncle_.”  

 

Hilda giggles but quiets when she realizes the attention Zelda’s strange exclamation has drawn.

 

*****************************************

 

If she focuses entirely on her sister, the rest of the crowd fades away.

 

“Turn around.”

 

Zelda climbs to her knees, balancing herself with her hands on the back of the chair. Even this has a strange grace and fluidity to it.

 

Somehow her sister always manages to look like both a Degas that she could only marvel at from a distance at the National Gallery and the amateur black-and-white photos Edward had kept hidden in a box under his bed. (She’d only snuck the quickest peak at those before being caught and bribed into silence.)

 

Zelda rarely wears red and it is lovely against her skin but the slip has to go.

 

Hilda’s fingers catch the hem at the back of Zelda’s thighs. She pulls it up more slowly than strictly necessary.

 

The perfect curves of her sister’s ass come into view. She yanks the fabric over Zelda’s head.

 

*****************************************

 

This is Hilda’s favorite form of magic:  her fingers disappearing and reappearing, the intimate pinch of that which is most Zelda around them—Zelda coming apart in her arms, repeating her name like a litany.

 

*****************************************

If she is unrelenting, if she presses even harder, Zelda will bear down painfully on her fingers and come again, soundlessly.


	7. Chapter 7

Zelda slumps back in the chair, smiles in that lopsided way that so few people have ever seen.

 

Remembering that smile has made Hilda forgive her sister more times than she can count over the years.

 

Hilda goes happily into Zelda’s lap where her sister sets to kissing her. Small, slow kisses to the corner of her mouth, her cheeks, her eyelids. Rough, lingering kisses to her mouth and throat. Zelda’s teeth tug at the flesh of her bottom lip and Hilda feels the flush run up her chest and onto her neck.

 

A much, much younger Zelda had once told her—while running a slick finger that tasted of herself over those lips—“You have the most fuckable mouth I’ve ever seen”—and now all Zelda has to do is linger over her bottom lip and Hilda blushes and throbs.

 

Zelda pops open the rest of the hooks on her bustier and shoves it out of her way.

 

It frees her breasts to Zelda’s touch. Unfortunately, it also frees her tummy to everyone’s view.

 

Zelda’s fingernails scratch over the curve of flesh Hilda would most like be to be rid of; her sister’s words at her ear are distracting, even from the voice of her own inner insecurities—“my sweet sister, my beautiful Hilda.”

 

Zelda’s fingers tease over her mound, are almost exactly where she needs them.

 

And somehow over the arch of her foot at the same time.

 

Hilda looks toward her feet then back to her sister.

 

“Zelda.”

 

“Mmmm.”

 

“Someone keeps touching my feet.”  

 

Zelda’s hands grip the chair again for leverage. Hilda throws her arms around Zelda’s neck as she raises one of her heels to the intruder's forehead and shoves with enough force to send them stumbling back into the floor and to apparently satisfy whatever need had brought them over in the first place.

 

*****************************************

 

The squelchy sound of sex still makes Hilda cringe. She suspects Zelda makes it louder than it has to be for that reason.

 

She doesn’t mind right now, not with her forehead against Zelda’s, rocking slowly to meet Zelda’s fingers.

 

“If it isn’t the Sisters Spellman.”

 

Hilda’s head snaps up, recognizing the voice; Zelda merely looks annoyed.

 

Hilda’s first and natural instinct is to pull away from such an intimate embrace and cover herself, but Zelda’s hand at the small of her back prevents that.

 

At the very least Zelda should have pulled her fingers from inside her. But she hasn’t.

 

The Weird sisters surround them.

 

“Agatha. Dorcas. Prudence,” Zelda greets them dryly.

 

Hilda tilts her head to stage whisper to Zelda, “Did _not_ expect Sabrina’s friends to be here.” Her accent comes out thicker than usual and Zelda’s fingers slide deeper, twist just enough for her breath to catch.

 

Zelda doesn’t take her eyes off the girls, however.

 

Their attention fixes on Hilda.

 

“I didn’t think you did this kind of thing.”

 

There’s taunting in Prudence’s voice, sure, because there always is, but also something more.  Her long fingers reach out and tweak one of Hilda’s curls. Zelda’s free hand meanwhile has tightened on her hip and brings her down in time to meet the not particularly gentle thrust of her fingers.

 

The girls step away and bend their heads in quite conference.

 

Blonde, red, and brunette, their heads bob back up and eyes fix on Zelda and Hilda.

 

“We want to watch,” Dorcas and Agatha chorus.

 

“We want to join you,” Prudence clarifies, cutting her eyes sharply to her sisters.

 

“It’ll be just between us sisters,” she drawls, smiling at the older witches.

 

“And isn’t it always better that way?” Her arms snake around her own sisters’ naked waists, but her eyes stay locked on Zelda’s.  

 

Zelda looks at Hilda: “That has been my experience, yes.”

 

For a split-second Hilda thinks she just might come and not care who is watching.   

 

“Give us a moment.”

 

*****************************************

 

“You don’t have to do anything else.”  The hand that had been gripping her hip is now smoothing down her cheek. “You fulfilled your social obligation by stepping through the door.”

 

It hasn’t been as bad as Hilda had thought it would be. Of course, she has still only had sex at an orgy with the one person she has had sex with outside of an orgy.

 

“Just don’t leave me alone?” Her voice lilts a bit at the end and she half-smiles at Zelda.

 

Zelda who has still not stopped moving inside her.

 

Zelda’s eyes narrow.

 

“As much as I want you to enjoy yourself tonight, sister, _you_ . . . _are_ . . . _mine_.”  Those three words are punctuated by rough thrusts that send Hilda’s hands to Zelda’s shoulders. “I’ll share but only to a certain degree and only tonight.”

 

Virginia Woolf would be so disappointed, Hilda thinks, oddly, in how she responds to Zelda’s possessiveness.

 

*****************************************

 

They have ruined that chair, but surely everyone else knows the same cleaning spells as she does.

 

*****************************************

 

Her sister’s colossal self-esteem regarding her physical beauty may have helped to cripple her own but Hilda knows what they look like _together_.  Zelda, vain creature, has angled enough mirrors toward their bed that she’s aware of the effect.

 

Its disconcerting but not unexpected the way the sisters are gathered around them.  Hilda tries to put out of mind how much they look like children about to tear into Solstice presents--or lionesses descending on a fresh kill.

 

“You’re fascinating,” Dorcas wonders aloud, her fingers wandering over Hilda’s hip.  “So unspoiled.”

 

“You don’t know Zelda very well.”

 

Zelda laughs; Hilda feels it near her belly button.

 

“I’d like to.”

 

“In due time.”  

 

Those words reverberate on her inner thigh.

 

She should feel more exposed, given that she is on her back with her knees spread open for all and sundry to see.  Only she isn’t exposed for long as Zelda’s head dips and her mouth makes contact with her.  She forces herself to keep her eyes open as Zelda’s tongue lathes across the length of her labia; if she cranes her neck, she can watch her sister’s head move between her thighs and Agatha’s mouth leaving a wet trail down Zelda’s spine.

 

Zelda raises her head all too soon and shakes her hair out of her face. She licks her lips and smiles.

 

This is not the endearing smile.  This is the one that usually means trouble, though trouble Hilda often ends up enjoying.

 

She kisses her way up Hilda’s torso--then rolls them over unexpectedly.

 

“Come up here so we can do this properly.”

 

_“Here_?”

 

Surely some things should remain behind the privacy of bedroom doors.

 

Zelda reaches up to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear.

 

“I want them to see how exquisite you are when you take your pleasure.  I want to fuck you with my mouth because I’ve missed the taste of you.”

 

Poetry to porn in the space of a breath and she’ll do anything Zelda asks.

 

*****************************************

 

She puts a knee on either side of Zelda’s head, careful of her hair.  

 

“This part is always so awkward,” she complains down at her sister.  Especially with an audience.

 

“Only to you.” Zelda’s hands span her inner thighs. They move higher. “My view is divine.”  

 

She leans forward on her palms and, not for the first time, thanks Lucifer that her sister’s oral fixation extends beyond cigarettes.  

 

Zelda’s sharp tongue has been reducing her to tears for as long as she can remember.  That mouth can be so wicked and cruel. 

 

It makes it all the better, if she is perfectly honest, when that talented mouth is busy beneath her, when she can set the pace and ride Zelda’s mouth until her eyes sting for a much sweeter reason.

 

She’s never been one to appreciate talk about the messier, _nastier_ bits of sex; however, she knows Zelda will come away with her face slick from her nose to her chin and she won’t be able to get enough of herself as they kiss after.

 

She feels Zelda pat her thigh, recognizes it for what it is:  an invitation. She tenses but Zelda’s tongue pushes inside her and there is no room for those thoughts anymore.

 

She doesn’t have to lean forward to balance herself now because hands are pulling her back and holding her up. Hands are kneading her breasts.  Someone’s mouth is raising a bruise on her throat. 

 

Zelda moans into her and Hilda looks over her shoulder to see Prudence with Zelda’s thigh resting over her own shoulder, mouth just as busy as Zelda’s.

 

*****************************************

 

“Are . . . are you feeling better?  After the death . . . and the vomiting?”

 

“Can’t you see for yourself?”

 

Agatha does appear the picture of health.

 

**********************************

 

Dorcas hasn’t magicked away her freckles the way Zelda had. Hilda had hated to see them go.  

 

Her shoulder is covered in strange constellations against a sky of milky white skin. It could take some time to taste all of them.

 

Dorcas, like her sisters and Hilda’s own, is also a consummate bully, prone to pinching and biting.

 

Like Zelda, she can also be rendered inarticulate with a few soft words in her ear and feather-light touches down her back.

 

**********************************

 

Zelda is above Prudence.  

 

There is a violence to their coupling that Hilda finds disturbing.

 

She much prefers the languid way Agatha is rolling her hips against hers, the way she stretches to catch Dorcas’s mouth.

 

**********************************

 

“ _My, my, my_. What do we have here?  Should we send the children away?”  

 

******************************

 

Mary Wardwell jerks Zelda’s hair back so hard that she can see her sister’s teeth jar. Part of Hilda wants to wrest the witch’s hands from those beloved amber locks.

 

Another, unfamiliar part of Hilda, can’t get enough of Zelda’s exposed throat and jack-hammering chest, the hint of fear that darkens her eyes.

 

She also vaguely wonders how Mary has kept her bright red lipstick from smearing through all the, well, activity so far.

 

With Zelda pressed warm and writhing between them, Hilda leans in to see for herself.

 

Parent-teacher conferences will be interesting from now on.

 

**********************************

 

They arrive home later than they had intended. An impromptu stop in the woods just outside the cemetery had waylaid them.

 

Hilda had gotten a pebble in her shoe and ended up with bark in her hair and a perfect set of indentions from Zelda’s fingernails on her bum.  (She’ll make Zelda be the one to go back and fetch her underwear in the morning.)

 

**********************************

 

When they go to check on the girls, there’s a moment of panic when they aren’t asleep on the sofa with the television still on as they had expected or even in Sabrina’s room.

 

Finally, just before Zelda shouts for Sabrina, Hilda finds them in Zelda’s room in what used to be her own bed. The baby is sleeping in her bassinet and Sabrina is sprawled with her head at the foot of the bed, one of Hilda’s saucier novels just out of reach of her hand.

 

“Leave her be,” Zelda whispers. She pulls the quilt from her own bed and drapes it over Sabrina. She even allows herself a quick, indulgent kiss to the top of her niece’s head.

 

**********************************

 

In the hall, Zelda says, “It’s too late to go to sleep.”

 

“Too early,” Hilda corrects.

 

**********************************

 

Steam rises off the hot water as it meets the cool air of the bathroom. Hilda had thrown three heaping handfuls of Dead Sea salt into the water and murmured a restorative incantation before Zelda had eased herself in with a long sigh.

 

As children Zelda would have claimed one side of the tub and Hilda the other.

 

Now Zelda’s breasts slide against Hilda’s back, her thighs spread to make room for Hilda’s hips.

 

**********************************

 

 

Her fingers can skim Zelda’s knees just below the water as scratches in unexpected places sting and heal.

 

Zelda has one arm locked around her waist, thumb occasionally brushing upward to stroke the underside of her breast and the other draped on the rim of the tub.

 

Muscles that had started to burn from infrequent use begin to relax.

 

Being half asleep and this sated could be dangerous.

 

Still, drowning isn’t the worst way to die, and she’d know better than most.

 


	8. Deleted Scene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I scrapped this bit near the end of the Weird sisters scenes because it just didn't fit the tone of the story. But, hey, its written so you might as well have the melodramatic angst.

Zelda is above Prudence.  

 

There is a violence to their coupling that Hilda finds disturbing.

 

She much prefers the languid way Agatha is rolling her hips against hers, the way she stretches to catch Dorcas’s mouth.

 

“Does she know the things you let that man do to you?”

 

Prudence’s voice stops Hilda cold.  She does know, in the abstract.

 

 _“In the house you share?_ ”

 

Zelda’s eyes meet hers.

 

Hilda _hadn’t_ known that last detail.

 

She ducks her head back to Agatha’s neck, concentrates on the pulse beating there, despite how her throat had been slit while her sisters watched on.

 

At a time when less endorphins were flooding her system, she might have stormed out—to have a good cry.

 

“That’s better.”

 

Prudence’s voice is hoarse.  Hilda can’t help but look back.

 

Zelda’s left hand has all her weight behind it now as her fingers circle the girl’s throat.

 

Baiting Zelda is a dangerous game at the best of times.

 

Prudence arches sharply up against Zelda, seems frozen, then boneless.  

 

**********************************

 

Her sister’s hand has not moved from her throat.

 

“ _Zelda_ ,” she warns.

 

Prudence’s fingers claw at Zelda’s arms.

 

**********************************

 

“You’re wasting all this energy on the wrong person.”

 

Hilda’s fingers circle Zelda’s wrist.

 

“You have a lot to apologize for.   _To me_.”

 

She pulls Zelda away as Prudence coughs and is drug away by her own sisters.

 

**********************************

 

Apparently these things happen here, frequently, and, while Prudence keeps a wary eye on Zelda, the sisters are not inclined to leave their company.

 

Other than their coloring, the sisters are markedly similar in every other way.  She and Zelda are exactly the opposite:  opposites. 

 

Not technically bound by blood, the sisters seem to work harder to connect themselves.  They’re certainly connecting right now.

 

Right now _Hilda_ misses being blissfully ignorant of Zelda’s exploits under their own roof.  Not in all these years had Zelda brought a lover home with her.  Not that she is aware of.  Maybe she just hadn’t known.  She’d thought they had an understanding about that.  Just not in their home.

 

“Hilda.”

 

She’s drawn her knees to her chest while she tries to see where her underthings were left.  She refuses to wander about looking for them.

 

“I won’t offer any excuses.”

 

“ _Where_?”  Zelda, ironically, is the masochistic one.  But she needs to know.  “Where in _our_ house?”

 

 Her sister at least has the good grace to look shamefully at the floor.

 

“The den.”

 

Where they have spent countless hours at jigsaw puzzles.  Where they have celebrated decades of holidays.  Where they watched Sabrina take her first wobbling steps across the rug.

 

“Our room.”

 

She slaps her, just as hard as she had in her nightmare, and Zelda reels from it.  Her mouth isn’t sewn closed this time, but it is agape in shock.

 

Hilda’s hand stings.  

 

“I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have hit you.”  

 

This isn’t her.  She isn’t the one who lashes out like this.

 

Zelda’s cheek is quickly turning red.

 

In fact, her entire chest is flushing.

 

“No.  I deserve it.”

 

Zelda has scooted closer, is prying Hilda’s arms from around her knees and working her own arms around Hilda’s waist.

 

“I deserve far worse.”

 

She tucks her face into the crook of Hilda’s neck.

 

“You should send me to the Cain pit.”

 

“Stop it.”  

 

She pushes Zelda away until she can hold her face between her palms and look her directly in the eyes.

 

“I will not hurt you, so you can feel better about defiling our home.”

 

**********************************

 

“Forgive me.”

 

“I will.  Eventually.”  She kisses Zelda’s forehead.  “I always do.”

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
